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Profits May Rock Podcasting World

A conventioneer examines Apple's latest iPod, on display Friday along with earlier versions at the iLounge.com booth during the Podcasting and Portable Media Expo in Ontario, California.

Steve Friess

ONTARIO, California – A trade show seemed dangerously close to breaking out here over the weekend, as vendors lined up to tout the latest podcasting wares to the milling masses.

But nifty products and gizmos were ultimately a sideline at the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference, where attendees wrestled with a far more fundamental point: whether this podcasting thing is – or even should be – a business.

Audio

Robbie Trencheny,age 14, the event's youngest attendee from San Ramon, California, talks about his technology podcast. To listen, click here.

"If somebody gives you money, you owe them something," said keynote speaker Leo LaPorte, who appears in ad-supported radio and TV shows but eschews commercial promotions for his popular This Week In Tech podcast. "I listen to my listeners, but I don't want to listen to advertisers."

LaPorte's comments served as a counterpoint to the commercial thrust of the show, where business-oriented products dominated. The gathering of about 2,000 podcasting aficionados wasn't greeted with some next-generation MP3 player to give Apple Computer a run for its money. Rather, a sheaf of services from established players like Audible.com and newcomer Podtrac appeared here to offer ways for podcasters to count audiences, deliver ads and charge listeners.

"It's been a fledgling conference with a lot of focus on how to get people to carry advertising on their podcasts and find ways to capitalize podcasts," said Jeremy Horowitz, editor in chief of iLounge, a site that covers iPod-related products. "There really wasn't that much new in the way of products."

Much buzz attended the weekend release of a demographics-and-advertising program from New York startup Podtrac. CEO Mark McCrery said his company has developed a means of attaching a prefix to the name of MP3-formatted podcasts that will obtain an exact count of downloads per show, thus far a vexing challenge for podcasters because some podcast directories cache shows on their own servers.

The company also plans to help podcasters create sales kits and then work to connect them with advertisers, with Podtrac taking as much as a 30 percent cut of the revenue.

The service has struck a chord with podcast hosts like Paul Saurini of Denver-based Barefoot Radio, who said he's uncomfortable approaching advertisers.

"I wanted to talk to Podtrac because as a third party, they will have credibility," Saurini said. "If it's just me, people might doubt what I say."

Audible.com, a company that heretofore has focused primarily on selling audio books and some radio programming, announced at the expo a service coming this winter that will host shows for podcasters, collect data on whether downloaders are actually listening to it and set up a vending function for podcasters to charge listeners for their shows.

The vast majority of podcasts are presently available free, largely because Apple does not list shows that demand pay for content in its market-dominating iTunes menu. Yet Audible chief scientist Guy Story, who helmed the programming team for the AudibleWordcast system, said the company believes future podcasters will want to sell subscriptions in addition to having ads on their shows.

Podcasters would pay up to 3 cents per download to have Audible host their shows, a fee that would replace popular podcasters' sometimes-formidable server bandwidth expenses. A premium service would charge the podcaster 5 cents per download in exchange for Audible's copy-protection encoding as well as audience demographic information that the podcaster can use to market the program to advertisers. Audible also would take a 20 percent cut of any subscription fees it collects.

BitPass, a 3-year-old Menlo Park, California, company, showed off a similar process at the expo that enables podcasters to sell their content.

Taldia showcased its podcast-production service. The Altadena, California-based company has a deal with the Associated Press and other news outlets in which Taldia's army of voice talent, which is spread out across the nation, records audio summaries of printed news reports. For $5 a month, subscribers can select what news topics they want to hear about, how many minutes of content they want and at what times of day they want it delivered to their computers.

Adam Curry, the former MTV VJ turned self-styled "Podfather," spent the convention scouting new talent for his venture-capital-funded company, PodShow. (Curry, the focus of pre-conference controversy involving a dispute with convention organizer Tim Bourquin over PodShow's lack of sponsorship and his refusal to give a keynote address, said he and Bourquin made nice this weekend and hope to collaborate on future conferences.)

Curry said his aim is to create opportunities for independent podcasters to quit their day jobs and devote time to the craft.

He also believes the right advertising will be welcomed by a properly targeted market.

"Look at Vogue; Vogue magazine is all advertising," he said. "My wife, that's her Bible, man. She loves it.... People enjoy hearing about products that they're interested in."

All the chatter about money and business riled some conventioneers like The Big Show host Aaron Bates, of Queen Creek, Arizona, who believes greedy podcasters will make the same mistakes as traditional radio.

"I'm not anti-money or anti-commercials, but people who listen and do podcasts walked away from commercial radio for a reason," Bates said. "For me personally, I got tired of constantly being marketed to and hearing a generic fake radio personality. When the traffic guy has something to pawn off to the listeners, there's a problem with that model. So why are people so eager to return to that failed model?"

One attendee adamantly opposed to having advertisers on his shows is 14-year-old Robbie Trencheny of San Ramon, California. Trencheny's site indicates he quit his podcast in September, but he attended the conference and was enthusiastic about the craft.

"If (others) want to make money, that's their own decision," said Trencheny, an eighth-grader at Raskob Day School in Oakland, California. "I'm not looking to make any money off this. I mean, I've already got a job."